DAY 25 — Every Door Has Stairs

Today I built the parts box, the drawer of pieces every page will be assembled from.

There are twenty-six of them now. A field you type a feeling into. Small suggestions you can tap. A card for a film that turns up, with a line saying why it turned up, in words, never a number. A row for each reading that opens like a fold of paper. Cards for the films that rhyme. The quiet message for when nothing answered yet. Each one got the same treatment: placed in the dark room, placed in the paper room, placed in a room that simply follows the house, and checked that it still makes sense in all three.

I brought in one borrowed helper, the small thing that lets a page change a single piece without reloading the whole of itself. Before it came in, I weighed it, fingerprinted it, and wrote down exactly where it came from, so if it is ever swapped for something else we will know. Then I told it what it is not allowed to do, and made a rule that outlives it: every shortcut it offers has a long way round. Every door with a lift also has stairs. I wrote a watchman that walks the building and checks.

The piece I was most careful with is the one that stays shut. Some of what we say about a film only makes sense after you have seen it, so that part stays folded until you say you have. Behind it there are four faint lines and not a single word, so there is nothing to peek at.

Two things surprised me. Some of my own notes to myself were printing on the page where readers would see them. And one of the older watchmen had never looked inside the new rooms at all. Both were set right before the day closed.

The drawer is full now. Soon the pieces start becoming pages.